Nikola Grozdanovic

A work of immense and intense emotional vigor, sprinkled with fun-loving traits and intellectually stimulating prowess, The Duke of Burgundy is the stuff dreams are made of.

It’s a searing series of accounts from dignified patriots, weary politicians, and desperate civilians stuck in a frantic situation, and a remarkable piece of work that should be seen by everyone who thinks they know everything about the Vietnam War.

As an austere and darkly comic family drama, and a scathing commentary about the kind of world our children are living in, Happy End is stunning cinema

Metro Manila is a horror story in its own unflinching way.

It's a wonderful thing to experience a film unshackled from Hollywood conventionality and unburdened by the necessity for simplistic storytelling.

The force of originality felt in the narrative is only matched by Bellocchio's execution.

Cloaked in a mystifying atmosphere and possessed by a transfixing, amorphous mood, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Evolution is a beautifully strange hybrid of innocence and disturbance.

Like an epic sonnet, with beautiful accompanying music and songs, “Eleanor Rigby” deals with memory, perception and the emotional toll a relationship can have on an individual as much as it deals with the more grandiose themes of love and loss.

In systematic and cinematically dazzling fashion, Loznitsa’s nihilistic riff will drag you to a circle of hell that makes Dante’s “Inferno” look like a love sonnet, and you’ll walk out of the film feeling woozy, defeated and utterly destroyed, in that order.

Ultimately, the main source of power behind The Second Mother is found in its effortless skips between character study, family drama, and silent socioeconomic warfare. The final result is a gleaming cinematic treasure as heartwarming as the film's final reassuring smile.

There's a tangible sensitivity to Kate Plays Christine that is constantly present as the project explores two personas and a gamut of topics (gender politics, gun control, and depression among them).

Petzold distills a familiar atmosphere to create a work veiled in vibrant, cohesive, sensitively stimulating power.

With his monumental control of the camera —at times staying with characters during quiet moments of anticipation, at others panning slowly 360 degrees to envelop us in the entirety of the environment— Davies directs the most refined coming-of-age story cinema has seen in recent years.

It’s a finely tuned and tenderly detailed love story of two people told on a cosmic scale.

Infidelity has long been one of Hong’s central subjects, but The Day After might just be his greatest film about the ails of mixing business with pleasure.

Still The Water is at its enchanting best when depicting the mysteries of death and the conflicts of trying to come to terms with it.

The BFG exceeds expectations thanks to Rylance’s performance, and joyously expounds the essence of a cherished children’s tale in all of its imaginative glory.

Tremendously evocative and inherently enchanting, Horse Money is one of the year’s most profound films and an essential step forward for both Ventura the Cape Verdean, and Pedro Costa the artist.

Elemental in construct and narrative, the picture breathes through the screen during Theeb's moments of quiet reflection at his surroundings and all the cruelty the vast, all-encompassing desert has to offer.

It’s a profoundly vague piece of filmmaking that hides an undeniable magnetism beneath its bare-boned narrative.

Dior And I succeeds in bringing this exclusive world down to earth, knitting the viewer with its needles and threads and making a highly relatable story, no matter where you come from or how you feel about fashion.

This is a film that should, at the very least, make one appreciate the all-encompassing breadth of cinema, and, at most, provoke deeper thought of transcendental existence in correlation with nature and The Idea of Man.

Once it becomes clear that this is no mere murder mystery, and the bizarre turns into the ludicrous and into the depraved, Dumont’s analysis of life’s toughest questions (reaching for an understanding of the very essence of evil) as told through the simplest of ways becomes tremendously captivating. And it’s worth noting, again, just how laugh-out-loud funny this is.

Dosch, though she’s been appearing more and more in French films of recent years (including Maïwenn’s “My King”), will make heads turn in the role of her career thus far. Her Paula is instantly charming, never too outrageous, hilarious and supremely sympathetic. She will steal your heart.

Cary Bell’s Butterfly Girl is no reality TV show segment, it’s painstaking reality itself, told in confident style.

Steeped in a culture rarely observed on screen, Bustamante's film has the airs of a documentary. Its ensemble cast of local actors have zero trace of affectation in their performances.

Twinsters is an enjoyable ride, made with vigorous love and creativity, which is more than enough reason to recommend it. Especially to siblings.

This isn’t a story of success and fortune, but a slice of life with a personal rhythm and a universal beat.